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Unspeakable Words

Book Review of Unspeakable Words (The Sixth Sense #1), by Sarah Madison

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Unspeakable wordsI picked up a copy of Unspeakable Words, by Sarah Madison, as a Dreamspinner freebie over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Description from Goodreads:
Special Agent John Flynn is everything Jerry Parker is not: dangerously handsome, coolly charismatic, and respected by his peers. Special Agent Parker is dedicated and meticulous, but his abrasive personality has given him a reputation for being difficult. When new information on a cold case appears, Parker is assigned to work with Flynn, and the sparks fly as their investigative styles clash. Contact with a strange artifact changes everything when it bestows unusual and unpredictable powers on Flynn… and the two men must learn to trust each other before a killer strikes again.

Review:
I’d give this a 3.5/5 and then round up for sheer enjoyment. Sure, the plot is a little wonky. The fact that the men are FBI agents is basically irrelevant for all the investigating they do. The whole set up for the serial killer is literally just dropped in exchange for something different all together and never picked back up again. The two characters’ personalities aren’t really all that consistent from beginning to end. But despite all that, I enjoyed the book. It’s predominantly just the two main characters stuck together and getting to know one another. But it’s cute and a little funny. Actually, it’s a bit like a Mary Calmes book. Objectively I know it’s not really a very good book, but I still liked it and I’d read more.

Rattlesnake

Book Review of Rattlesnake, by Kim Fielding

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RattlesnakeI bought a copy of Rattlesnake, by Kim Fielding.

Description from Goodreads:
A drifter since his teens, Jimmy Dorsett has no home and no hope. What he does have is a duffel bag, a lot of stories, and a junker car. Then one cold desert night he picks up a hitchhiker and ends up with something more: a letter from a dying man to the son he hasn’t seen in years. 

On a quest to deliver the letter, Jimmy travels to Rattlesnake, a small town nestled in the foothills of the California Sierras. The centerpiece of the town is the Rattlesnake Inn, where the bartender is handsome former cowboy Shane Little. Sparks fly, and when Jimmy’s car gives up the ghost, Shane gets him a job as handyman at the inn. 

Both within the community of Rattlesnake and in Shane’s arms, Jimmy finds an unaccustomed peace. But it can’t be a lasting thing. The open road continues to call, and surely Shane—a strong, proud man with a painful past and a difficult present—deserves better than a lying vagabond who can’t stay put for long.

Review:
I thought this was a sweet little story. It’s basically about two men falling in love, that’s it, nothing flashy or exciting, but it’s sweet. What saves it from being boring is that the two men in question are the type of men who rarely make it as main characters, a 43-year-old drifter/chronically homeless man and a 33-year-old crippled man with a traumatic brain injury. And the book proves that readers (or at least this one) don’t need infallible, godly gorgeous, alpha men as heroes. I adored Chase and Jimmy (Chase especially).

It is a bit of an insta-love, which is unfortunate, because it’s not really supported. I have no idea why Chase tried so hard to keep Jimmy around, but I’m glad that he did. I also thought it was a little on the predictable side. But again, it’s a fairly straight forward romance, so it wouldn’t have been overly realistic to have too many twists and turns. All-in-all, it was a book that made me happy to see the HEA (even if it did get a little sappy there at the end).

stygian

Book Review of Stygian, by Santino Hassell

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StygianI bought a copy of Stygian, by Santino Hassell.

Description from Goodreads:
Jeremy has been isolated and adrift since the death of his brother. Most people just see him as the skinny emo kid who wears eyeliner and plays drums. No one gets him. Nobody tries. He thought the indie rock band Stygian would become his anchor, but—lost in their own problems—they’re far from the family he sought.

Still, hoping to get close to Kennedy, the band’s enigmatic guitarist, he follows Stygian to northern Louisiana for a summer retreat. They had planned to spend six weeks focusing on new music, but things go awry as soon as they arrive at the long-deserted Caroway mansion. Tempers flare, sexual tension boils over into frustration, and Jeremy turns away from the band to find a friend in his eerily beautiful landlord Hunter Caroway.

Kennedy suspects there’s something off about the creepy mansion and its mysterious owners, but Jeremy thinks he’s finally found somewhere he fits. It isn’t until Kennedy forces the Caroways’ secrets into the light that Jeremy realizes belonging sometimes comes with a price.

Review:
This one ticked a lot of boxes for me. I have come to love Hassell’s writing style and his basic….I don’t know what to call it, tone maybe. Just the way everything I’ve read by him, regardless of the genre, has a certain feel to it that I love. It’s gritty. It’s real. It’s maybe even a little nihilistic. It pretends happily ever after can’t exist, even if a character gets it in the end. Maybe you’d have to read his stuff for that to make sense.

In Stygian, Hassell has created a host of seemingly unlikable characters. I mean all of these guys repelled me at some point, some so much I didn’t think they’d be redeemable. But Hassell pulled that off too. The whole thing is as creepy and atmospheric as you’d expect a gothic style, Southern horror novel to be, with a villain that’s maybe a little more complex than first appearances suggest.

My only real complaints are that the narrative is a little conversational at times and I didn’t really feel the connection between Kennedy and Jeremy. A lot of it is pre-existing, based on events prior to the time frame of the novel. I definitely felt what Hassell is doing here, but I had to just take his word for it. As much as I liked Kennedy and Jeremy (and I did), the strength of emotion seemed sudden. (Though some of this feeling was ameliorated after reading the prequels.)

Lastly, there had better be a sequel or I may have to go a little Annie Wilkes on Hassell. (Ok, not really, but please be a sequel.)

As an additional bonus, if you read the book and want more, there are two prequels available. One from Dreamspinner (Feeling You) and one posted on Binge on Books (A Night in the Life). And though not quite out at the time of this posting, I’m told there will also be a Stygian related story in the free anthology Lead Me Into Darkness.